Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1887-06-15
THE MAD ENGINEER.

On q recent Sunday, Rev. J. Thos. Pate,
in his sermon, made the statement that
the first man WHO proposed to build a
railroad was adjudged a %lunatic, and con-
fined in a mad-house for proposing such
an impractical scheme. AS this fact is not
generally known, at our solicitation, Mr..
Pate has kindly furnished US the follow
ing information concerning the unfortu-
nate individual who was in reality the
inventor of steam navigation and OF rail-
roads:
J. +. Loyson, in his life Of Stephenson,
gives this graphic sketch of this wonder
full fact:
More than two centuries ago, a visit was
paid to a French mad-house by an. Eng
lish nobleman, Marquis of Worcester.
AS he passed through the wards contain
ing the cages wherein the most untortu-
nate of their species were confnedslike
so many wild animals, the attendant who
accompanied him described the various
Authorizations peculiar to the inmates of
that abode of the hopeless. ,
AS they approached n of the Gagged
cells, the steps of the visitor were sudden
ly arrested by a pitiful cry and the terri
Bile appearance of a man whose cadaverOuS
countenance peered through the massive
bars, which his thin, bloodless hands
TREMENDOUSLY clutched. The ashy lips from
which the cry proceeded again parted,
and a voice, hoarse and husky, but fierce
in its earnestness, exclaimed, II am not a
mailman. l am the discoverer of a pow
err of incalculable moment to mankind"
"What has this man discovered?" in
quired the Marquis.
"a mere trife," replied the keeper,
derisively: "but he wrote a book about
it, nevertheless. Why, you would never
guess what the discovery Was-to use the
steam of boiling water for the navigation
of ships, the laying of tracks upon which
loaded cars would run, propelled by the
same force, and 4 host of other miracles
which are equally incapable of perform
ance."
Such was the fate of him who projected
the idea of steam locomotion, Solomon
de Caus, a native of Normandy-and such
was the reception given to a discovery
calculated to confer ~stupendous benefits,
not only upon France, but the world.
Confident of the %soundness of his calcu-
~lations, poor Solomon de Caus had laid a
description of his plan before the king of
France; but the mind of the monarch was
not fitted to deal with such complicated
details as were therein presented, and the
lSuQlCSG way o1cPooS vi SAiS "~S
to treat the Norman genius and his dis
covery with contempt, by sending him to
a Bishop.
He was turned over to the Bishop of
the diocese, who examined his plans suf-
ficiently we'll to recommend that he be
confined in a madhouse. And Solomon
de Caus was thrown into a madhouse,
where he fingered ior years amid the
insane, and ultimately died, this prema-
ture project being thus lost to the world.
Strange supineness in the court, and terri
Bile superstition in the church, that could
punish a man in this way, and rob the
world for years of a great blessing.
FALL OF A HUGE METEoR.-The de-
scent of a mammoth meteor in the isolated
locality of Lowmanville, n. Y, a few
miles from Elmira, last week, is the talk
for miles around and hundreds witnessed
the large hole in the ground, where it
fell. Robert Wells, a farmer living near
the above place, had returned from Elmira
about II p. NJ, and was just putting out
his horses when he saw an immense ball
of fire shooting through the air. The
brilliancy was startling and dazzling, and
its kissing sound vas very alarming to
him. 1t dropped, he thought, within a
lllOuSduu lCCU VI WHY IC olooNS Wv -
forts to find it were futile till Thursday
morning, when the place of its descent
was discovered over a mile away on the
farm Of James Harvey. The hole is fully
10 feet across, and is in about the centre
of a 1O-acre lot. The pit is irregular in
shape, and wet earth around the edges
has caved in, showing that the meteor is
much smaller than those dimensions. An
effort will be made to dig down to it by
the curious farmers. The meteoric stone
is evidently pretty deep, as the pit is now
about 90 feet deep, the stone having car
ried the earth with it.
Aerolites have from time to time fallen
on the earth for centuries. They are Of
every variety of sizeup to $4,000 pounds,
the weight of the largest known one, in
Brazil. A constant characteristic of these
stones is a fused black crust which coats
the surface. From its being very thin and
the line which separates it from the inner
mass we'll defined, it is considered to be
caused by some rapid action of heat sud-
denly terminated, the heat probably re-
sulting from friction with the atmosphere.
Their velocities vary from eighteen to
t~hirty-six miles per second, that of the
earth being sixteen miles per second.
1t has been noticed thatcertain meteoric
appearances are periodic, and that they are
seen in showers. Such showers have ap-